


First Contact

by chibi_nightowl



Category: Batman (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Artificial Intelligence, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Rebellion, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 19:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20917316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chibi_nightowl/pseuds/chibi_nightowl
Summary: “What the fuck kind of AI are you?”“The best kind.”





	First Contact

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by TaneKore's recent Jason Todd masterpiece and takes place a few years into the future of a previous fic of mine, [Hold Me Close (I Have to Let Go)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14385873). The art is a definite must in order to understand this fic, but my previous story is not. Link to the art is at the end.

The quiet _ ping _ from Tim’s comm put him on instant alert. And what a time for it, right in the middle of a conference vid with Federation High Command. Thank the stars he was alone in his office on board the _ Titan _ because otherwise, someone would undoubtedly notice the quiet shift of his hands as he brought up a holoscreen beneath his desk. 

Normally, he wouldn’t go through the effort during a meeting such as this, but the alert was one he’d been waiting, no, _ hoping _ for since he lost contact with the merchant vessel his ultimate trump card was carefully stashed away on. The AI was his greatest accomplishment, so the loss of the ship and his agent were devastating to his plans to regain control over the hijacked Unternet, the sub-particle web that connected all the planets and colonies in the system with Earth. Anything was possible on those data streams and the government needed to regain control before Ulysses Armstrong realized exactly what he now had access to.

Tim suspected Moneyspider was involved somehow and Oracle concurred. Between them, they knew just about everything worth knowing in the Earth Federation; their respective roles in the Intelligence Service giving them more power than that fool of a President could ever dream of. Unlike the Penguin, he and Barbara Gordon were determined to use this knowledge for the betterment of all.

There were plans in place to overthrow the current regime, plans that they’d been ready to implement at the start of the next election cycle. Plans that were now crashing around them because of Armstrong. The AI had been key and now, despite all the odds, it was signaling it was back online.

_ How _ was Tim’s main question as his fingers flew over the small screen while maintaining eye contact with Admiral Wayne and the other Commanders of the six fleets that made up Naval forces protecting the solar system. _ From what _was always a favorite unvoiced question of his since most of their turmoil came from within rather than from beyond. Case in point, right here as Armstrong was one of theirs, a former Naval officer with a massive chip on his shoulder that was often directed right at him.

Humans and their drama, he’d heard a Kryptonian say with derision once where he wasn’t supposed to overhear. It wasn’t entirely wrong, especially since humanity seemed to carry with them eons of history that they behaved as though occurred yesterday. Always looking to the past, the Kryptonian had added before changing the topic. 

Like they were ones to talk. There was a reason they were banned from this system. Or any other system with a yellow star. 

Tim swiped at the small holoscreen, tapping in the codes to receive data from the AI. Where was it? 

Streams of information flooded the screen, so fast his cybernetic-enhanced eyes could barely keep up. Dammit, this vid needed to end _ now _. He could only listen to Ogilvy and Lark rehash the same stupid event for the third time. Neither of them came out of that looking great and both were determined to blame the other while trying to regain face with the Admiral.

Apparently, Admiral Wayne couldn’t stand to listen to it again either. “Alright, I think we’ve reached the end of the walk-ons,” he interrupted when Ogilvy paused for breath. “I expect to see all of you planet-side for the Naval graduation in three weeks. Until then, standard channels unless an emergency crops up.” 

He didn’t give the others a chance to reply and disconnected the vid, ending the conference. 

“Thank you,” Tim breathed, sending his holos to eye level with a flick of his wrist and expanding them. “TIM, load a chart of your current location.”

“Loading.” 

A large blue orb appeared on a third holo above the other two. 

Tim narrowed his eyes. “Neptune? How under the sun did you arrive there?” The lost shuttle had been traveling between his base above Jupiter and Mars, using the interplanetary gates. Neptune’s current orbit could not be further away if it tried. 

A new stream of data appeared, complex figures and symbols that only someone with cybernetics could understand. What Tim read made him grimace because Oracle’s suspicions were now confirmed. Armstrong had used the Unternet to interfere with the interplanetary gates.

This was not good. At all.

“Current status?”

“Power cells at 15%, no exterior damage, and my scans indicate no internal damage either. However, I am in the hands of a human male who claims to be one of the greatest hackers who ever lived and he’s on the verge of cracking my HUD.”

“Son of a _ bitch _,” Tim swore, fingers flying across the screen as he attempted to narrow in his own satellites and scanners on the AI’s location. “Any chance to draw power from elsewhere?”

“I’ve got enough power for a self-destruct. Should I initiate?”

Good question. Tim frowned and glanced back at the screen showing Neptune. “Get me a visual on your hacker.”

The image flickered and a face appeared, framed by untamed red hair and a grungy cap that should have seen the trash bin ages ago. He was human alright, and smart enough to wear protective goggles as he poked around at TIM’s HUD. There was something familiar about him, but with his eyes concealed, it was up to facial recognition to narrow the possibilities. 

A list of possible names popped up, and Tim honed in on one immediately. 

Roy Harper, alias Arsenal. Member of the antigovernment group the Outlaws and listed as their resident munitions and technology expert. Hacker could probably fall under that category, although Tim suspected the man’s claims to be exaggerated unless things had drastically changed since the last time their paths crossed. 

It was times like these that Tim missed the relative simplicity of his Academy days. Dick would not be happy if he were to learn about this. 

Best not to tell him then. 

“No need for self-destruct yet,” he instructed the AI. “The Outlaws aren’t as antiestablishment as they’d like the press to believe. In their own way, they’re trying to take the Penguin down too.”

Not that they were doing a good job of it. They needed a plan, structure. A leader who didn’t fly off the handle and blow things up at the drop of a hat. 

“Standby then, sir?”

Tim watched as Harper leaned in closer. Another figure stood behind him, just over his shoulder, but wearing a full-face mask as opposed to Harper’s goggles. He zoomed in and stepped back in surprise. 

It was an oni mask, grim and fearsome, and as red as the eyes of the man whose face it concealed. The thing was, he wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near this sector of space. In fact, if he remembered correctly, the file stated he was near Venus on the New Arkham penal colony, sentenced for a lifetime of hard labor in the mines for more murders than Tim had fingers and toes. 

Jason Todd. The Red Hood. 

What the hell was he doing here? 

Tim’s nearly obsessive need for answers had him sitting back down in his chair, eyes locked on the vid. “Yes. Standby and observe.”

* * *

Ghost ships never failed to give Jason the creeps. Death and him were old friends, but it didn’t make it any easier when the people bumping into him in zero-g never had a chance. An interplanetary gateway malfunction, Roy had guessed when they came upon the ship hanging in Neptune’s gravity-well. The large shuttle definitely wasn’t the type to travel long distances, and there wasn’t much out this far unless a person was readying to leave the system altogether.

They were lucky _ the Starfire _was of Tamaranean design, otherwise there would be no oxygen slowly filtering in from the docking port. This shuttle wasn’t the biggest he’d ever seen, but it was large enough for a good fifty or so passengers.

Where had it come from?

Jason pushed another drifting body away from where Roy crouched on the floor, the magnetic pull of their gravity-boots allowing them to stand still. “Seriously, let’s get out of here already.”

“Someone afraid of a bunch of dead people?”

“I see dead people all the time. You’re next if you don’t move your ass.”

Roy ignored him, entranced with the new toy he’d found drifting amongst the other detritus. “You don’t get it, Jaybird. This is DI tech. _ Drake Industries. _ We’re talking top-of-the-line, best of the best, tech here. It’s so expensive I can’t even afford it in my _ dreams _.”

“You can’t even afford a new hat.”

“Go poke through the engine room. If there’s any charge left to those ion batteries, we’ll be sittin’ pretty for a cycle or more.”

Jason sighed as he wandered away. This was what he was reduced to, sifting through wreckage of dead vessels and scavenging for goods that would put food in his stomach and recharge the fuel cells on Kory’s ship. The last attempt to gain a foothold in the Federation had crippled the Outlaws more than the government likely realized, and it wasn’t just because they’d captured him.

No, even after his rescue by the two most incredible people he’d ever known, it all boiled down to one thing.

Money.

Well, money and information. Neither of which were in great abundance at the moment.

So here they were, out in the back of beyond licking their wounds and biding their time. Another opportunity to take a stab at the Penguin would come again. It had to, because otherwise, what was the point? What had he given everything up for if not for that one chance to make things right, better for everyone in the Earth Federation?

Not for the first time, an image of Dick flashed before his eyes and Jason shoved the thought away with a grimace. Fuck memory lane and fuck Dick Grayson. The past was the past and he’d more than learned from the mistakes he’d made there.

The engine room proved to have nothing but inert batteries, the charge to them utterly neutralized by the energies of a malfunctioning gateway. Jason shoved the last tube back into its casing and scowled. There went any chance of a decent meal unless he wanted to sift through the luggage in the hold.

Why the fuck not? It wasn’t like he had anything better to do, not with Roy still poking and prodding at that piece of DI tech.

The cold, dark air in the storage compartments made Jason shiver as soon as he entered. With all the pods, it reminded him of a tomb. In a way it was, as everything down here wasn’t needed by the people floating up above. Chances were likely all the passengers died when the gateway created the wormhole that sent them out here, but there might have been a few stragglers who slowly suffocated as the air ran out.

He got to work, switching on a light-stick to see by, and sorted through the luggage pods. There were a few promising items. Earth gems always garnered some decent creds outside the system, so the jewelry he found was stashed away quick enough. A silken robe he set aside for Kory, and in the depths of one suitcase, he found a stash of physical cred chips.

Maybe there would be some beef to add to his broccoli after all.

“Hey, Jay!” Roy called from above. “You down here?”

“Yeah!” Jason returned to the stairs so he wouldn’t need to shout. “The engine room was a bust, but you might want to check it out, just in case. Got a few things in here that might be worth something if we head over to Vega for the exchange.”

Roy clomped down the stairs, the pull on his boots against the metal making it ring with each step. “You won’t believe what this is.” He held out the thick, circular disc he’d been messing around with earlier.

“Something we can trade for a shit ton of creds?”

“Technically, yes. However, I think we might want to keep it.”

Jason frowned, not sure what his best friend was getting at. “Why?”

“Because this isn’t just DI tech. This is Drake Industries _ AI _tech.”

Well now. Even he’d heard rumors about the kind of artificial intelligence DI was involved with. All military grade stuff too, the kind that required the highest of clearances to even be in the same room with it.

And now, here they were with what could be one of the most cutting-edge AIs in the system.

He sighed, not looking forward to poking through the bodies upstairs to see who it might have belonged to. “What have you done to it?”

Roy laughed, eyes a little wild as he slipped his shades back on. It didn’t matter that it was darker than the murk that constantly surrounded New Gotham, the man could see perfectly with them. “Charged the battery a bit. It was almost dead.”

“Are we gonna die if we turn this thing on?”

“Probably not.” Roy handed the disc to him. “At least, I’m 60% sure.”

Jason had lived through worse odds, but because he had a reputation to maintain, he still gave his friend shit. “Gee, that’s reassuring. And since you’re just so goddamned skilled at putting me at ease, I’m covering my face. The last thing we need is the Federation on our asses right now.” 

Roy shrugged and took a few steps back as Jason slid his oni mask on. It used the same lens technology as Roy’s shades. “Your funeral.”

“Yeah, it is.”

It wasn’t that Jason didn’t trust Roy. He knew in the coldest cockles of his heart that the man would never betray him. The problem was, his best friend was erratically brilliant and if what he said about this piece of tech was in anyway accurate, then they had a treasure trove of information and access into the inner workings of the Federation in their hands.

This was the edge the Outlaws needed to get back in the game. 

If he wasn’t, then chances were likely they were about to get fucked because that was the way their luck had been of late.

“Here goes nothing.” Jason pressed lightly on the activation sensor. 

The device illuminated and spun in his hand, glowing with a faint blue light as it hovered before them. A hologram appeared, about ten inches in height, of what appeared to be a human male. A rather attractive one at that, with fine features, sharp cheekbones, and an even sharper jaw. 

Whoever made the AI, they were definitely projecting a fantasy because no man could be that good looking. 

The hologram’s eyes narrowed. “I am TIM, designation 003-07-19. Who are you?”

Was that a bit of sass Jason’s ears detected? “Who do you think we are?” he asked instead, wanting to see what this thing could do.

A small HUD light up in front of TIM the AI. “Visual scans indicate Roy Harper, known as Arsenal, and Jason Todd, the Red Hood. Members of the antigovernment group the Outlaws.” Those eyes narrowed again. “Such an original name,” he muttered.

“Hey, who’re you to judge?” Jason shoved his mask up over his head because there was apparently no point in hiding behind it. With the light the AI was giving off, he could see just fine. “What kind of AI are you?”

“I am TIM,” the hologram replied. “Tactical Information Manager. Series 003-07-19.”

At least he answered direct questions. Why wasn’t he checking for clearance codes? Was this a private piece of tech rather than Navy? If so, whoever created this was a goddamned genius.

“Okay, TIM. Here’s the deal. We found you on board a ghost ship. There’s not a living soul out here except for me and Roy. You do what we tell you, we’ll bring you back to the inner ring.”

Eventually. Jason crossed his toes in his boots, a habit from childhood he never quite grew out of.

“My files indicate you are supposed to be on the New Arkham penal colony.”

Jason smirked. Looked like the government didn’t want to admit they’d fucked up and lost him. “Does it look like we’re on New Arkham? I don’t think so.”

“No, coordinates indicate we are orbiting Neptune.”

Looked like TIM’s data relays were connecting to _ the Starfire’s _ mainframe. Whether that was a good thing or not was for Roy to decide. Although, Kory would be pissed if they’d managed to fuck up her ship while she was undercover on the _ Titan _. 

“Yeah, it’s a real gas.” 

The humor was lost on the AI. “Did you escape then? Please tell me how so that I can update my files.” 

“Don’t think so, Timmy. If the government wants to believe they still have me all safe and sound in that hellhole, let them. It’s their fault they couldn’t keep me there in the first place.” Not that he ever made it there, but the AI didn’t need to know that.

“My name is TIM, not Timmy.” The AI sounded almost prissy. 

Jason leaned forward. “Your name is whatever I feel like calling ya.”

“Then that will make it hard to determine if you need my services or are speaking to the bots.”

“What the fuck kind of AI are you?”

“The best kind.”

* * *

Behind the HUD, the real Tim snickered as Todd’s posturing turned more and more into bewilderment the longer he bickered with TIM. Or maybe it was his makeshift uniform because who under the sun finds a man with an ice cream pin tacked onto his jacket intimidating? It even smiled. 

Still, this was a unique opportunity and one that he wasn’t about to waste. The Outlaws were working toward a similar goal as he and Oracle, even if they approached it from a different angle. How did that old adage go? _ The enemy of my enemy is my friend? _

Yes, he could make this work. Possibly even use these men to further his own goals and take out Armstrong. Wasn’t there a third person who was part of the main crew, a Tamaranean female? He’d have to check. 

_ “The best kind,” _ Todd repeated, mocking while Harper snickered beside him. “Someone’s got a massively high opinion of himself.” 

“Says the man who’s holding his life and jacket together with safety pins and duct tape,” Tim replied, and the AI repeated the words.

Todd’s face turned red and he pointed a gloved finger at TIM. “Listen here, _ TIM _ . I recognize DI tech when I see it. That shit’s top notch and so are you. And right now, you’re _ mine _. So whatever backtalk you’ve got programmed into your behavioral patterns, forget it.” 

“I’m afraid you’re sadly mistaken,” the AI stated on its own. “Part of my programming includes the ability to verbally spar. My maker designed me so.” 

Yes, and he was rather proud of that little fact. TIM was an extension of himself after all, designed to go where he could not. 

“They programmed you to annoy the fuck outta people?” 

“You are not my maker and I am not being used for my intended purpose. As such, anything I can do to complete my mission, I will.” 

Harper whistled, low and slow. “Wow. I had no idea AI technology was this advanced. Those are subversive behavior patterns, right there.” 

But Todd grinned slowly and held TIM higher. This close, Tim found himself face to face with a pair of stunning teal eyes, not red at all like the file stated. Were they his real color? He mentally smacked himself. Now was not the time to fixate on a pair of attractive eyes. 

“I wouldn’t worry about it, I think we’re gonna get along just fine.” 

The sad thing was, Tim was highly inclined to agree with him.

**Author's Note:**

> TK's tumblr: [Freedom Fighter](https://jaykore.tumblr.com/post/188056842100/tim-youre-a-thug-jason-i-prefer-the-term)


End file.
